trouble. She was tenderer than the others, more docile and gentle.
They saw her, not as a healthy, normal girl, but as something fragile
and very precious.

Nina was different. They had always worried a little about Nina,
although they had never put their anxiety to each other. Nina had
always overrun her dress allowance, although she had never failed
to be sweetly penitent about it, and Nina had always placed an undue
emphasis on things. Her bedroom before her marriage was cluttered
with odds and ends, cotillion favors and photographs, college
pennants and small unwise purchases--trophies of the gayety and
conquest which were her life.

And Nina had "come out." It had cost a great deal, and it was not
so much to introduce her to society as to put a family recognition
on a fact already accomplished, for Nina had brought herself out
unofficially at sixteen. There had been the club ballroom, and a
great many flowers which withered before they could be got to the
hospital; and new clothing for all the family, and a caterer and
orchestra. After that, for a cold and tumultuous winter Mrs. Wheeler
had sat up with the dowagers night after night until all hours, and
the next morning had let Nina sleep, while she went about her
household duties. She had aged, rather, and her determined smile
had grown a little fixed.

She was a good woman, and she wanted her children's happiness more
than anything in the world, but she had a faint and sternly repressed
feeling of relief when Nina announced her engagement. Nina did it
with characteristic sangfroid, at dinner one night.